


You Are The One Thing On My Mind

by dcnwilds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, also hella gay, au were you get a tattoo when you fall in love, like literally 2015 words of pure angst, much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dcnwilds/pseuds/dcnwilds
Summary: Lavender Brown has two tattoos. Parvati Patil died with one.





	

A smile across a crowded room, the brush of hands, soft words, stolen kisses, this was how it was supposed to go. This was how a boy and girl were supposed to fall in love. Soon they’d be catching moments in abandoned classrooms, his hand on her thigh, her hand clutching his hair, his lips pressed against hers. Her heart sounds like rainfall during a storm, but his remains steady.

Lavender long ago decided it was hard being in love with a boy who would pick another girl over her at any given moment, but Ron makes her smile (which is a rare occurrence these days), and her heart skip a beat, and that’s all she needs.

“Hey, what’s this?” Ron murmurs against her skin, his fingers tracing a simple pattern on her shoulder, that is usually obscured by her cloak and school uniform.

Lavender doesn’t have to look to know what this is; she knows the details of the golden tattoo portraying a miniature and intricately inked mountain by heart, and often finds herself doodling on parchment, instead of taking notes.

“It’s, uh, nothing,” She brushes it off, before her voice can become thick with tears, and kisses the ginger long and hard.

Distractions aren’t, apparently, going to work today, Lavender discovers, when he pulls away, and she begins to curse the whole system of tattoos when you fall in love, because shit, she doesn’t want to have this conversation. Magic is supposed to have order and purpose, and Lavender can’t see how a golden tattoo appearing when you fall in love, depicting an interpretation of the meaning of the one you love’s name, has any reason to exist.

“Tattoos are supposed to fade when you stop loving someone,” He says finally, voice unsteady. “Wanna explain who you’re still in love with?”

She thinks about lying, about telling Ron that she’s in love with him, that the tattoo is for him, but it would be no use. By this point, all wizards and witches know the meanings of their names, know what golden ink to look for, and know when a tattoo was just not theirs. Besides, surely he’s already seen the golden crown on her ankle, symbolising ruler.

“Wo-“

“It’s Cormac, isn’t it?” Ron interrupts her angrily, before she can even finish her first word, ears turning red. “Of course.”

Now Lavender is just confused about how the conversation has turned to Cormac McLaggen, before she recalls the Gryffindor’s ‘affections’ for Hermione Granger. She represses the urge to sigh – of course it was to do with her – and tries her best to not think about who the tattoo is really for.

“It’s not Cormac,” She states dully.

“Then who is it?” Ron snaps, almost yelling now, and Lavender flinches as he starts to name almost every boy in their year, each word a sharp accusation.

“You’re jealous of a ghost!” She finally screams, because she can’t fucking listen to him naming one more person, one more boy, he thinks she loves, but now she’s choking back a sob, and she can’t do this, she can’t think about her, and grabs her bag, abandoned in favour of making out just ten minutes before, then storms out of the classroom.

If Parvati was here, she’d roll her eyes, tell Lavender she was overreacting and should just tell Ron who she was really love with, at least then he wouldn’t resent her forever, which is becoming to look like the best-case scenario.

Lavender is shaking, now, her grief hitting her like a hurricane, and she can barely breathe as sobs wrack her body, and she is empty, she is always empty, and Parvati is gone, and Lavender is still here, but she doesn’t know how to be here without her best friend, and she doesn’t know how to exist without her, and all the constellations have gone dark now, and it hurts to remember, but she can’t bear to forget.

Lavender was thirteen, and Parvati Patil was a constant, unquestionable part of her life. They were two halves of a whole, and neither would ever have it any differently. They knew everything about each other, or, at least, hoped they did. Not a day went by when they didn’t exchange smirks, whisper secrets, pass notes. They told each other everything. Well, almost everything. How many nights had Lavender Brown lay awake, past midnight, trying to gather the courage to just say I like girls, too. And everyone else? But there was always the fear that Parvati would flinch away, mock her, throw her head back and laugh, sneer. Lavender knew knew her best friend well enough to know she wouldn’t, but that didn’t stop the dizzying fear at the thought of telling Parvati she was pansexual. And so she would eventually sigh softly, and close her eyes, hoping for a few hours of sleep before dawn came.

Lavender was fourteen, and the first time she saw Parvati after a summer apart, she didn’t stop smiling the whole day. On the Hogwarts Express, they claimed a carriage, glaring at any first years that hovered outside the door, and spread their luggage over one side, curling up on the other. Lavender didn’t really think about how most friends probably didn’t lay with each other’s heads in the other’s lap, or find themselves smiling just because their friend had brushed a tendril of their hair out of their eyes, or get butterflies at the sound of their laugh. It all felt so beautifully natural, and them, that it didn’t occur to Lavender that this was how love stories began.

Lavender was fourteen, and when she found out there was going to be a Yule Ball, there was only one person she wanted to go with, but the thought of ever asking Parvati Patil to go to a ball with her terrified her more than any boggart ever could. When Seamus asked her, she said yes immediately, figuring they could both go and miserably watch their best friends having fun and dancing with their dates, and maybe she’d convince him to at least dance once with her. When Harry asked Parvati, she tried her best not to scowl. The two friends ended up sitting together (they always ended up together), as their dates mooned over someone else, and, surprising Lavender, Parvati jumped to her feet when a fast song started, proclaiming that just because they’re not having fun, doesn’t mean we can’t. They laughed, and they danced, and threw all their energy into whirling around the dance floor, and Lavender was high on that night, and the pulse of the music, and Parvati’s hand in hers, and the way her heart was pounding in her chest, in a way that she knew wasn’t just from her state of euphoria. 

Lavender was fifteen, and would too often find herself staring at her best friend, but, honestly, how could she not? Especially during summer, when the summer days made Parvati’s freckles more prominent, more likely to attract Lavender’s attention every time she glanced at her; each time she counted them and memorized them instead of the five steps to a conjuring spell, and at night, when she closed her eyes, she saw them still. But especially during winter, too, when Parvati wrapped herself in her favourite woolen scarf that Lavender bought her for her birthday (and th    e one that Lavender thought of sharing with her, sometimes), but still complained that she was bloody freezing, Lav, and the blonde had to force herself to not kiss her there and then, desperately trying not to think about what it would be like to hold Parvati’s hand as they walked the streets of Hogsmeade, or gently wipe butterbeer froth off her upper lip as they huddled in The Three Broomsticks for warmth, or kiss her ice cold hands “for the extra heat” as Parvati giggled.

Lavender was fifteen, and stood staring at herself in the mirror, eyes wide. She’d only noticed it that morning, as she’d hastily dressed after waking up too late, but even her sleepy gaze couldn’t have missed the golden tattoo that surely hadn’t been there the night before, as she fastened her cloak, which, fortunately, covered up the mark. The design haunted her throughout the day, and she was uncharacteristically quiet, reserved, distant - she didn’t even notice Parvati staring at her, biting her lip, deep in thought and concerned. Long after the other her roommates had retired to their beds, she was still stood in the small bathroom, tracing the pattern over and over again, with her fingers. It was a miniature mountain, but that didn’t surprise her - Parvati and Lavender had been discussing the meanings of their names, and the corresponding tattoos that would appear for them, since first year. Back then, it never struck her mind that it would be her best friend’s name on her skin. It made sense, in a way, that it was a mountain, and not just because of Parvati’s name. Parvati had that wild, untamed glory that you can usually only find in nature. It made Lavender want to kiss her, and touch her, and love her, and marry her. She glanced at her tattoo one last time before she left, and, like Parvati, committed every last detail to memory.

Lavender was sixteen, and when she said goodbye to Parvati on the crowded station, she hugged her like she was never letting go, already miserable at the thought of having to spend six weeks without seeing her best friend almost every moment of the day, smiling weakly at a witty and bitter retort about Parvati’s muggle stepfather, before Padma was there, glaring pointedly at her watch, but watched Parvati and Lavender bidding each other goodbye with a strange look in her eye Lavender couldn’t quite decipher.  
Lavender was sixteen, and when Padma Patil flooed into her living room one day, she felt cold dread settle within her at the sight of the tears streaking the girl’s face. “The death eaters,” She gasped jerkily. “They- They came, to kill Mum for consorting with a muggle, but when Parvati tried to stop them, they k-killed her instead.” Lavender shut her eyes, because this couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t, it couldn’t, it couldn’t. Parvati was watching the sun rise, and running over freshly cut grass, and staying up all night, and couldn’t die, she couldn’t be gone, she was too alive. Parvati was Lavender’s world, and the world was within her, and she wasn’t allowed to die. When she opened her eyes, Padma was gone, and she screamed until it felt as if her lungs had collapsed, and perhaps they had.

Lavender is seventeen, and Parvati never will be, and Lavender is still crying in the hallway outside an abandoned classroom, when she hears hesitant footsteps, and, wiping her eyes, glances up, only to see the person she least expected.

“Hi,” Padma says, somewhat awkwardly. “Look, I know I’m probably the last person you want to see, that I… That I remind you of her, but I think you should know…”

Padma trails off again, fingers tapping a frantic rhythm at her side, before meeting Lavender’s eyes for the first time throughout the exchange.

“She had a tattoo too. On her hip - Merlin, I don’t think she ever wanted me to see, I walked in at the wrong time… Shit, getting distracted. The tattoo, it was, um, it was a sprig of lavender. She was in love with you.” 

And Lavender finally understands why Padma keeps staring at her this year, an unanswered question in her gaze, and why sometimes Parvati would look at her the way Lavender never thought anyone would, and that when Lavender felt butterflies, so did Parvati, and that the world is a crueller place then she could have ever imagined.

Lavender is seventeen, and if Parvati was too, maybe they would have had a chance. But Parvati is gone, and Lavender is all alone, and she breaks down thinking about everything she and her best friend could have been.


End file.
